It's a hard problem. Before 9/11, "the secret files" were locked down tightly, and every branch of the federal government that kept such files kept almost all of them separately; they were subsequently inaccessible to every other branch. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies came under harsh criticism following 9/11 — since information sharing was so limited, it was very difficult to correlate data and properly address targets and threats. The response was to pool a LOT more data than was previously available in one place on SIPRNet, which is accessible to intelligence agents, the State Department, the various military branches, federal and state law enforcement, and even some non-US allies. The truth is that the only files leaked to Wikileaks were not considered to be particularly important, had the lowest level of classification, and were accessible to (and could be easily shared by) over 3 million people.

The response will unfortunately be to lock down information sharing yet again, increasing the likelihood of intelligence and response failures in the future. Most of the federal government and idiot, grandstanding congressmen made the cable leaks into a much bigger event than it would have otherwise been had they not overreacted and simply "kept calm and carried on", and the US will face the self-inflicted consequences.

Secretary Gates had it right when he noted early on that, "I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/gates-on-leaks...

Anyone stealing the data, yes. I read the article as saying that people using remobvable media for purposes consistent with their jobs will now be subject to court martial.

Example: A machine is normally connected to the network. It is moved to another location and is not connected to the network yet. Someone using a thumb drive to copy a file from a machine on the network to the unconnected machine is breaking the new directive even if the thumb drive never leaves the office or is erased immediately thereafter.

Just an opinion of a paraphrasing of a leaked memo describing a directive...

Naturally this was hidden in a procedures manual several 1000 pages long.

But because the procedure dealt with encryption of classified data - the procedures manual saying how it had to be protected was of course secret! And couldn't be issued to the workers.

And not being connected to the network would be the only reason you need removable media. If your computer is not connected to the network, it isn't very useful. Barely anything is stored locally, the risk of someone walking off with the harddrive is too high.

What would stop you from connecting to Gmail (HTTPS) and emailing something to yourself?

However, a lot people use machines they don't control where this kind of approach is perfectly feasible.